In Which Rosa and Hugh Become Associates
by TimeyWimeyNoises
Summary: Rosa philosophizes about her new status as a Pokémon trainer before entering Floccesy Ranch, and while looking for a certain Herdier with Hugh, they encounter some motley hallucinations. [Mild Rosa/Hugh. There's some ferriswheelshipping if you squint.]


This is where childhood ends. The path to maturity is en route to Floccesy Ranch, where I'm told to meet with Hugh and give him a Town Map for his inventory. I've waited sixteen years for this to happen, and they've come to pass; now, I can say this is the defining moment for any neophyte trainer and her potential for greatness in the Unova Region. This is the real deal: no jesters' dance, no sermons from the Church of Arceus, and definitely not the midnight talks with your mother about her experiences training Pokémon.

No, this is war.

This is the war between everything you've been schooled about and everything the grand world of Pokémon has to offer: when you stop believing everything you're told and start trusting few, where money talks and intelligence shows. Poverty silences and hypocrisy abounds. This is the beginning of your Pokémon journey.

Mortality. Alder is waiting for my return to the edge of Floccesy Town. His history hangs over my heart as if its neck was suspended from a noose – _your Pokémon can die. _Their bodies can rot, their eyeballs can roll back into their heads, and they can lose all function of their lungs and brains … just like humans. From starvation … disease … battle. "They're not tools of war, Rosa," my mother drilled repetitively into me, "but companions in arms. They are the key to humanity's harmony. They are the source of our lives. We were created by Pokémon."

My odyssey to the Pokémon League will be a dangerous one, but we all have to face our fears. We're always acutely aware of our susceptibility to death. There's a higher chance of dying on the way to Celadon City than to win riches at the Game Corner, after all.

I know my predictions about foreboding are so pessimistically grim being that it's so early in my career as a Pokémon trainer, but I'd like to present this with a marked sense of reality. This isn't a diary.

This isn't a diary, but a hand reaching out for understanding. Hopefully, my fingers can curl around some of you.

The sun climbed Braviary this morning, and its smile has dried the verdant grasses of Route 20. The ever-consuming sounds of nature gave me reason to clutch Snivy's pokéball close to my bosom. The countryside wind was feral and unkempt, but at the same time, cleansing. I was breathing this air at liberty, under no one's counsel. It smelled like loam and the hides of aboriginal Pokémon … Trainers were everywhere, beckoning me to conquer them and become greater.

I would not dare beat their companions so senselessly that they would feel the same anguish as Alder, but I'd not lose to one of these yuppies.

Floccesy Ranch was an area of emerald-green brush and grazing Mareep, centralized about two buildings. Hugh rendezvoused with me at the entrance of the fence, donning that usual face of determination mixed with displeasure. Charging at me from where I stood with the enthusiasm of a thousand champions, he exclaimed, "Oh! Nice! You've come here to toughen up!" His voice was rife with mildly violent intent and genuine curiosity, but for what reason I wasn't entirely sure. This side of him must only come out when he's about to face a formidable challenger, because I have only seen his eyes so alight with their crimson color one time before – just before he'd battled me on the overlook directly following Snivy's addition to my vacant pokébelt. Maybe he was happy because he'd found a home in Pokémon-training … or there was something much more dimensional lying beneath the calm waters of the northern Atlantic …

"Maybe I've come to train," I supplied coquettishly, summoning my body into a trite pose of pseudo-intimidation as new trainers have the habit of doing, rolling Snivy's spherical housing around in the palm of my hand. "Or I've come to have my Pokémon beat the crap out of yours!"

His face contorted unpleasantly, and the snort is something ambiguous that I remember even to this day. I must have discomfited him – he lost his calculated composure so quickly that Archimedes should turn at least 67ᵒ in his grave. His recovery was so quick, though; I have to remember to compliment Hugh's resilience later.

"All right! Let's see how much stronger you've become!" Brandishing his Tepig's own pokéball, my rival tossed it into the air, caught it again, and then blazed a healthy set of teeth at me courageously in a face-splitting grin. "Come at me!"

The fires of war were raging! This was a battle against my most competent opponent yet! Hugh will be my first and last adversary, and I'm very confident he will live this out to fruition!

"The one rule about being the best, I think –" I said, my voice bouncing between wavelengths as I cast Snivy's ball forth into the impending fray, watching with awe as I always did the explosion of albescent light from within those confines; bursting from its sophisticated interior was perhaps the smuggest grass-type Pokémon on this side of Unova. "—is that there will always be someone better than you who wants nothing more than to knock you off of your pedestal! There's a tower, Hugh, and only one of us can be at the top!"

"I'll see you there, Rosa," he acknowledged, following my actions in kind.

This battle's design was dangerously flawed on my end. Hugh and I, though matches in intelligence and equals in drive, were mismatched in type affiliations; with a fire-type like his Tepig, he may be able to easily win this fight. I bet it even knew Ember already.

I would contend Hugh again; I had an attack command drilled out of my lungs before I could even think about mulling over type disadvantages. "Volos, use Tackle! Watch out for Tepig's fire! Do not fall victim to your weakness!" His Grass Snake Majesty straightened his back for a posture appropriate for one of his high social class, and then employed his xylem-veined limbs to move in accordance to his high statistic in speed. "Beat him with your agility! Do not hold back!"

Contrariwise, Hugh's Tepig wasn't receiving my Snivy's inclination toward speed well, and it was stupidly moving its four legs in ways its trainer wasn't telling it to. "In our final battle, Rosa, I'll remember every single tinge and twang of pain you've caused Tepig and my Pokémon to come. So will they! We'll rise with you, though – with my encouragement, there won't be anything you can't do!"

Narrowly avoiding a volley of embers shot by Tepig's wide maw, my miniature serpent pivoted from one location to the next, and finally, his head collided with the side of this small swine that it couldn't turn quickly enough. I should have been able to hear its ribs cracking, but its anguished cry of frustration won out. "A glass cannon, Hugh? You won't beat me on that tower of ours if you can't withstand your enemy's attacks!"

"I'll remember that, too. Tepig – use Tail Wh – "

"Excuse me! Excuse me! Stop fighting! I need some help! My Herdier, my Herdier!"

Why would someone interrupt our battle? This was unheard of! Hugh's attention was already pulled from our fight and fixed aggravatedly on what he assumed was a case of a lost Pokémon; his entire body had grown rigid beneath the strain of this hereto tacit request. Why was he acting so strangely?

"Who are you?" he demanded in a tone that was nearly accusatory, his hands curled into fists that'd likely mar his gloves with crescent shapes later. He hadn't even waited for the two to approach us before he'd begun spouting rude inquisitions at them. As Snivy returned to my side and Tepig to his, the older man caught up to us, placed his hands on his knees while he attempted to catch his breath, and then looked back up at us with these two gray-blue, pleading eyes that no one could possibly resist in a frail-looking man's skull like his.

"I'm the owner of this ranch, and this is my wife."

"Nevermind that, honey. Shouldn't you heal your Pokémons' HP after a battle? I could give you both Potio –"

"No. Why have you come asking about a Herdier?"

"Right, right. Frank, baby, ask them."

"You haven't possibly seen a Herdier around here, have you?"

Deadpanning at the Herdier that was accompanying these two country-dwelling ranchers, I said nothing as Hugh continued to listen to their case.

"It's just that our two Herdier are always together – they're shepherds to these Mareep here, y'see – and it worries me a little bit because it's the first time the other one has wandered off."

"You're a _little_ worried!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" Hugh recoiled and bristled at the apparently ridiculous underestimation of this man's, and I could see his hands straining against the fabric of his gloves. Any harder, and he might begin to draw blood. Why was he so jaded? "Your Pokémon might be lost forever!" His overestimation of the situation might be just as silly. "Whatever, I'll look! Rosa! Help out!"

I was given no choice as he spun around on his heel and took off faster than I could think, and I gave the two adults before me an uncomfortable, reassuring smile in his absence. "I'm very sorry about his behavior. I dunno' what's gotten into Hugh, but I can tell you that your Herdier will be found. Excuse me."

"Okay! Please come back if you want me to heal your Pokémon as many times as you need!"

I would eventually join Hugh in the second fenced-in area of this field, but he wouldn't respond when I called out to him. Silly bugger. This wasn't the time to be pensive.

As I progressed, Hugh would always come up from behind and pass me by so quickly that I felt like one of those whirligig skate props with the sticks poking out at the sides. He mumble some obvious suggestion like, "Did Herdier wander back here?" and then stop somewhere to think again. He definitely needs to stop doing that before he endangers someone else or his Pokémon – his Pokémon, by the way, had been left back with the rancher's wife.

After not-so-inconspicuously sneaking past a janitor … right, I don't know why there was a janitor there … Hugh ran up to me once again and gifted me a Paralyze Heal. Rather, why would Hugh have one of these items, anyway? I can't remember seeing one at the Pokémon Centers in either Aspertia or Floccesy Town, but I suppose it doesn't matter.

Now, from here on out in Floccesy Ranch, things start to get very fuzzy in my memory. Never had I expected the former champion, Hilda of Nuvema Town, to be in the area, and nor had I expected that she now had a Musharna in her roster as I came to discover later on, but the Team Plasma member guilty of having stolen the rancher's Herdier allegedly scared her Pokémon and made it spread dream-dust in a far radius. It affected Hugh, too. I remember that. I don't think I've ever seen him more frightened.

Everything became much more vivid. The greens more effervescent, the blues more oceanic, the browns more like molten chocolate. Trees twinkled, grasses winked, and the air glittered ethereally as I returned to the primordial slick that was the inception of time. The air tasted sideways as the ground turned polychrome, and I watched as another human being came into my view and held his fist up in much the same way Hugh had. His grin was certain and smug, but there was something else about him that discerned him so much more. His determination was more seasoned than Hugh's, and it was more satisfied, too.

"The champion of Johto and Kanto?" Hugh was at my side, wide-eyed and bedazzled by this hallucination like me. "Gold from New Bark Town?"

"It's a long way to glory, guys! Maybe I'll see you at the top! Maybe someday we can knock each other off of that tower, and we'll see who comes out victorious and who comes out scorned! Let's go!"

We were teenagers that thought we were so invincible. There was nothing standing in our way to the Pokémon League. Just motivation. Just training. Just fear.

"You'll never make it in this world if you assimilate the way you are," an older, more bitter voice chimed in from the side, and we scrambled to locate its source.

"Ghetsis! I'll never forgive you for what you've done!"

Ghetsis? The leader of the disbanded Team Plasma?

"You won't get the chance. We took that Purrloin, and we trained it into something competent. We took it beyond your incapable hands, and we turned it into a _Liepard._ That is the legacy of evolution. That's the legacy you'll never meet."

"Are you really gonna' listen to this guy, Hugh? He looks like something a Garbodor coughed up," Gold admonished, his arrogance never diminishing as Ghetsis raised his scepter and tried striking his verbal assailant, but he swore as the thing slashed through nothing more than thin air and what looked like a holographic image.

We were none the wiser.

"Rosa …"

"Hugh, I don't know what's happening."

"I'm about to unleash my rage."

"Don't move. I don't know what will happen if you move. I don't know what's going on. My mind is in space-time."

As we had this petty argument, we barely noticed the appearance of another man with green hair … one I'd never met before. I looked at him, and I could remark a few things about his hobbies: he loved math, he loved equations, and he loved space. Maybe he could be a nice navigator for Hugh and I outside of this odd rift in the universe, but who knows what kind of vacuum we could be lost to if we tried to leave?

"Please, my friends: don't solve your problems with violence and pugilism," the man said, spreading his arms out, his square bangles ringing metallically against one another in motion. He spoke so quickly that I could hardly keep up with his words. "Negotiate." His serene gaze was then taken away from Ghetsis and Gold to rest on Hugh. "Where is your Pokémon, Trainer? You should be less worried about your convictions and more concerned about the location of your blessed friends."

Shock struck my rival with such intensity that he was temporarily paralyzed; he remembered he'd dashed into the meadow without Tepig. Rightly so.

"You remind me of her," the benevolent man before me mused off-handedly. "You picked the same starter … Are Snivy always such royal ambassadors for the Unova region?"

"There's nothin' more majestic than a Typhlosion, N! I've got no idea where you got your _Snivy _idea from!"

"All Pokémon are equal in a true connoisseur's eyes of them," "N" chided, clearly unhappy about this bias exhibited.

"All Pokémon are to be my instrument of domination! No one can stop me! Not you, not _her,_ and not this fledgling trainer in front of us!" Ghetsis bellowed, uncaring about his former king's reaction. "I'm king now … and you're a washed up puppet. Didn't you read the history books I provided you, N? Didn't you study hard enough?"

"Hey, now, now, stop going at each other. I'm not here for this kind of crap. Now, Rosa – there's one thing I'd like you to do if you do anything in Unova as a Pokémon trainer. I want you to find Ghetsis, and I want you to stop him and his new uprising –"

"She won't stop me."

"Don't speak with such certainty, Ghetsis. You've no idea about the potential this trainer has."

"Does it look like I want to be interrupted by you two morons, or does something about the way I talk scream, 'INTERRUPT ME!'? No. No, it doesn't. Rosa, you know what to do."

"She clearly doesn't." Much to my discomfort, the elder man with tea-green hair violated my personal space and picked up one of my long ponytails. "Look at her naiveté. Look at her philosophical conflicts. She's a virginal book open to the world even now. Even when she knows that we can will corrupt her. That death will. That this Hugh boy will. Look at how much she's willing to trust for false security."

"How dare you insult me so fervently when you know nothing about me! My name is Rosa Laurent, and you will know my wrath someday! You will feel sorry under the blows of my Pokémon, and you'll feel the tithes of humiliation even if it kills me! I will scorch you under an inferno before I ever let you get the best of Hugh, too."

"Her convictions are strong, Ghetsis. I've such high hopes for her."

"But can she keep her temper before raining righteous hellfire on anyone who pisses her off?" Gold inquired in rather a rhetorical way.

But it was done.

Winds coiled and burst upward from the grass, causing the oneiromantic effigies of Gold, Ghetsis, and N to vanish. A female voice cried the name of a legendary, and the masculine roar of a black dragon exploded from the west, and an electrical current crackled sporadically through the air. I could see well again, and my five senses returned to normalcy.

Hugh stood, motionless, before his knees buckled under him. He stared at the grass and fisted it up into his hands, censured by something beyond my recognition. I can just remember him shivering in fury, but his breakdown wasn't my concern.

Rather, Tepig was. Tepig was oinking its way back to Hugh, and it hobbled dazedly back between his arms, so tense in his anger. It must have sensed this upheaval in its trainer's equilibrium.

After I sank down beside him, we sat there for a long time without saying a word.

Our Pokémon were safe. We were safe. We were safe from those terrible illusions, whatever they were. Whomever they were of. Whichever purpose they had. Now that our attention was freed, I could finally give you your sister's Town Map: I balanced it on your head, and after mumbling something unintelligible, you took it off and shoved it in your bag.

"We'll take care of this, even if it's not real."

"It is. Team Plasma is dead if I ever come across them."

"Then we'll take care of 'em together. You wanted my help, right?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"We'll get your Liepard back."

"It was my sister's."

"Right."

"… Thanks."

"You don't have to thank me. I'm happy to help."

"No, I mean … thanks for staying by me while I snivel like this. Not very manly of me, I know."

"Like I give a crap about that."

"Yeah, whatever … now let's go find that Herdier. That rancher probably misses him."

Something about that day resounded so harshly against everything that I was. I didn't know what to do about Team Plasma, Ghetsis, or even you. I was just a stupid Pokémon trainer from Aspertia City whose mom had to ask if I knew what a Pokémon was.

One thing was for sure, though.

This was important to you. It always was. This was what made you so anti-social sometimes, but it was what drove you forward. I never had any "good" vindications, so it made me respect you. You had a reason to be great. You had a reason to become the best. I never did.

I never had a reason to be one of the best in Unova … until I met you.

You would be the reason.

I wanted to be the best for you.


End file.
